Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Cardew

michaels said:

I have to say it worries me that the govt have made a 'huge' announcement and yet we are not seeing many comments. I kind of suspect it is not because we are blown away by the scale and ambition of what was announced....

Surely a major announcement like this should have a separate thread.

Coastalwatch

Martyn1981 said:

Cut price green plan from Boris:

Boris Johnson announces 10-point green plan with

It's a start I guess and grabs attention merely by the headline but quite how nuclear energy can be considered green is beyond comprehension. Especially as the government has no credible plan for the disposal of nuclear waste other than as far away from London as possible.

michaels

Coastalwatch said:

Martyn1981 said:

Cut price green plan from Boris:

Boris Johnson announces 10-point green plan with

It's a start I guess and grabs attention merely by the headline but quite how nuclear energy can be considered green is beyond comprehension. Especially as the government has no credible plan for the disposal of nuclear waste other than as far away from London as possible.

South Georgia?

I think there was an announcement that gas boilers in new builds were to be banned (again) this time from 2023 which is not that far away.  I can't make the economics of a heat pump make sense for us regardless of how well insulated the house is, perhaps when the kids leave home and we stop using 700l of hot water a day things will change.

Martyn1981

Be great if more (and more) of the wind farm production/industry was located on UK shores.

GE said to be planning turbine factory in UK for Haliade-X

The Financial Times reported on 20 November 2020 that GE Renewable Energy is considering potential sites at which to manufacture turbines for the UK market.

Responding to questions from OWJ, the company – which has been selected to provide the 13-MW Haliade-X offshore wind turbine for the first two phases of the Dogger Bank offshore windfarms in the North Sea – said, “While GE Renewable Energy is excited about the UK offshore wind market and committed to maximising opportunities for UK-based manufacturers, we have made no specific announcements at this point.”

The Financial Times report said the company is considering a trio of potential sites for a factory to build the Haliade-X.

Although the largest market for offshore wind in the world, the UK does not have a turbine manufacturing facility, although turbine blades are manufactured there.

Martyn1981

I hope this works as it seems to tick lots of boxes, especially making use of facilities and workers where jobs have been lost.

Fungi insulation panels to be grown at Watchet's ex-mill

Insulation made from the roots of fungi which have been fed on waste will go into production at a former paper mill.

The project is a partnership between bio-tech firm Biohm and local social enterprise Onion Collective in a bid to "reinvigorate" Watchet in Somerset.

Wansbrough Paper Mill closed in 2015 with the loss of nearly 200 jobs - almost a fifth of the town's workforce.

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary newsletter extracts:

1, Cement and carbon capture. Several European groups have been working together to pioneer a technique for making cement that allows easy capture of the CO2 inevitably produced in the manufacturing process. Instead of injecting air into the kiln, the new process uses pure oxygen. This means that the flue gas from this ‘oxyfuel’ process will be nearly 100% CO2, which is cheaper to process than if it is mixed with atmospheric nitrogen. The first trial plant will be in southern Germany at a Heidelberg cement works. Three other interesting aspects of the new plan: 1) for the first time the partnership explicitly suggests the captured CO2 will be used to make aviation fuel 2) if aviation fuel is the use, it will make sense to generate the required hydrogen at the plant, not least because electrolysis would also produce the stream of pure oxygen that the oxyfuel process requires and 3) oxyfuel may be a move away from the other decarbonisation plan being pursued by Heidelberg at a Belgian cement works which uses a different technology from Australian company Calix. 
 
2, Peak oil. Kingsmill Bond and his colleagues at Carbon Tracker argue that oil demand may have peaked. Overall world oil requirements will rise by 3.6 million barrels a day (mbd) to 2030 in the central IEA forecast. The IEA says that demand will fall in richer countries but increase by 4.4 mbd in oil importing emerging markets such as China and India. However Carbon Tracker points out that oil imports currently cost around 2% of GDP in these emerging markets. Oil is 35% of Indian merchandise imports and China spends $80bn a year on fuel imports for transport. So there is a huge financial incentive to push towards electric vehicles in most importing countries, as well as health justification from reducing urban air pollution. Recent Chinese and Indian policy statements are indeed suggesting a far more rapid transition than previously forecast. This data-rich paper shows that the likely implication is that world oil demand will therefore fall from 2019 onwards, particularly if demand for plastics has also peaked. 
 
3, Other useful numbers from Carbon Tracker. The report reminds us that 61% of all 2 wheeler sales in China are already electric, as well as 59% of buses. He also calculates that a 2 kW installation of solar PV, filling a small domestic roof and with a components cost of about $1,000, will typically provide enough power to cover the needs of the average car for its entire life. This same car with a petrol engine would require one tonne of oil each year, costing the importer about $6,000 over its 15 year use.
 
4, Vehicle to grid. The first chargers that will both put electricity into car batteries and allow it to be extracted when needed were installed for a 100 home experiment in western UK. The local network will use the two-way inverters to help manage the local electricity network. Users are promised financial rewards of at least £120/$160 a year for making their capacity available for use. I suspect that car batteries will eventually become the dominant short-term storage medium. But obstacles remain. The price of the inverters for this new experiment is not far off ten times the cost of a one-way car charger. And only the Nissan Leaf allows currently allows both charging and discharging. Other manufacturers will probably follow in about 2024.

5, Solar to feed electric railways. Solar PV farms are more profitable if they can connect directly to local electricity consumers rather than simply sell into the wholesale market. The price achieved for their electricity may almost double. One particular idea often advanced has therefore been to use renewables to power adjoining electric railway networks. Railways are the single largest user of electricity in the UK, taking over 1% of all power. The first proposed large-scale connection in Britain (and possibly in the world??) received a promise of government funding this week. A new 3.75 MW solar farm will export directly to a railway line between London and the south coast. Once the site is working, the PV farm will be transferred to ownership by the community and by local rail users. 
 
6, Hydrogen coalition in the US West. This newsletter has already covered the planned conversion of a large coal-fired power station in Utah to using gas turbines that will eventually burn 100% hydrogen. This project is part of a new alliance of Western states and Canadian provinces building an energy economy based on hydrogen and renewables. Storage of hydrogen in a Utah salt deposit is an important part of the overall plan. $1bn will be spent creating caverns in the salt able to hold hydrogen with an energy value of about 150 GWh (about 4 hours of California’s typical consumption). A quick calculation shows that this is equivalent to about $6 per kWh, a tiny fraction of the $100 per kWh cost of batteries. (Thanks to Thad Curtz).
 
7, Offshore wind in the EU. The EU produced a short policy statement asking for a 300 GW target for fixed offshore wind by 2050. Other offshore technologies, such as tidal and floating wind, were allocated an additional 40 GW. The bloc has about 12 GW of offshore energy today. If achieved, these aspirations would provide about 80% of today’s electricity needs for the EU-27. The UK separately confirmed an intention this week to develop about 40 GW of wind by 2030, up from about 10 GW today. This alone would provide over half the UK’s current requirements. I argue in What We Need To Do Now that the UK, which controls about half the shallow waters of the North Sea, should eventually aim for at least 200 GW to create enough energy to completely decarbonise the economy, not just electricity supply, alongside solar and onshore wind. The new EU numbers suggest that the space exists to provide this capacity.
 
8, Hydrogen from Morocco. Morocco has exceptional sun and most of the world’s natural phosphate reserves. But at the moment it imports ammonia to make fertiliser from its phosphates. So it makes sense to manufacture its own hydrogen for conversion into ammonia. It announced that it would develop a trial plant to produce 4 tonnes a day of ammonia from surplus electricity. It said it would also develop a 100 MW hydrogen plant by mid-decade. The long term ambition is to capture 4-8% of the global power to gas or liquids market (‘PtX’). This will probably be critically dependent on using pipelines to move hydrogen from North Africa into Europe. Interest in this possibility is rising as states recognise that pipeline transmission is a more viable option than transmitting electricity. One study suggested that pipelines are 10 to 20 times cheaper than pylons over long distances.
 
9, BHP and steel. BHP is one of the largest iron ore producers in the world. Its long term survival will partly depend on whether steel production can be fully decarbonised, so it is starting to push its customers towards hydrogen. Much of its ore goes to China, which makes approximately half the world’s steel. BHP has committed about $US35m to working with Baowu, the second largest operator of blast furnaces in China, on trial projects to introduce hydrogen into steel-making. So far, most of the investments in using the gas in steel making have been concentrated in Europe.
 
10, Clothes recycling. The reasons so little clothing is recycled include difficulties separating cotton and polyester in single garments and, second, maintaining the lengths of individual fibres as they go through a mechanical or chemical process. An innovation from the Hong Kong clothing research institute allows the creation of new clothing using a simple and low toxicity process said to resemble boiling water. The youth fashion brand Monki, part of H&M, will launch its first genuinely recycled product this week, a grey tracksuit made using the new hydrothermal process. No details were provided of the costs but the range of new techniques becoming available for recycling raises hopes that this most difficult of sectors can be decarbonised.

Martyn1981

More on the subject of peak oil (item 2 in the newsletter - previous post), setting out how a rapid transition to electric vehicles in emerging markets, could mean that oil has already peaked:

Carbon Tracker Claims EV Revolution Will “End Oil Era.”

A Carbon Tracker report dated November 20, 2020, says the shift to electric vehicles in emerging markets will “end oil era.” In particular, it suggests the transition away from gasoline and diesel powered vehicles in emerging markets “may slash growth in global oil demand by 70%.” How is that number calculated?

According to the International Energy Agency Stated Policies Energy Scenario, which is based on policies announced by governments, emerging markets — defined as China, India, Southeast Asia, and most of Africa — are expected to increase oil imports for road transport by 4.4 millions barrels a day (bpd) by 2030. That increase represents more than 80% of the total growth in oil demand the IEA expects over the next decade.

The Carbon Tracker report is based on the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario, which predicts EVs will account for 40% of car sales in China, 30% in India and 20% in the rest of the emerging markets by 2030. Those expectations may be entirely too conservative, given the recent announcements from world governments such as the United Kingdom that sales of gas and diesel powered vehicles could be banned altogether by 2030 or shortly thereafter.

If that scenario is accurate, demand for oil by emerging markets would rise by just 0.6 million bpd by 2030, a 70% reduction. Under the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario, oil prices would be a quarter lower than under the STEP scenario. Reduced imports and lower prices would cut emerging markets’ collective oil bill by 38%, saving them $250 billion a year.

Martyn1981

Only took them 6yrs to U-turn, but the Gov is now to support on-shore wind and PV again. It'll be interesting to see what level of support is given, it might not even require any net subsidy, but just some assurance will help with financing of schemes, and in turn lower the overall cost of the projects and the price needed for the leccy generated.

UK government to subsidise onshore renewable energy projects

The government plans to double the amount of renewable energy it will subsidise next year after agreeing to include onshore wind and solar power projects for the first time since 2015.

Energy companies will compete for subsidy contracts in a competitive auction to be held at the end of 2021, which could support up to 12GW of renewable energy, or enough clean electricity to charge up to 20m electric vehicles a year.

The third pot will allow onshore wind and solar farms to compete for a support contract for the first time in six years after the government agreed to drop its opposition to the projects earlier this year.

joefizz

michaels said:

Just playing devils advocate how many MWH nominal of wind power would you need to produce the same annual output as a 440mwh SMR - about double?  And then how much storage would you need to ensure 24/7/365 power availability from wind (or wind plus solar) based on historic weather records?

Im studying an environmental energy course through Harvard online, and the figures they have given is about 5 times the wind for nuclear plus the storage.
As Ive mentioned before comparing nuclear and wind is comparing apples and oranges because nuclear is on all the time, 24/7 so thats your base load. Wind and storage (battery/hydrogen) after that with gas backup plants.
Its why most of the internet forum calculations on price are meaningless in the real world. See what happens when the lights go out, theres no discussion on cost then.
Sad to say the course has me more and more convinced the uk needs nuclear... at least until you have enough installed renewables to produce hydrogen for the gas fired plants.
Thats why the price of nuclear is so high. It needs to be because its inevitably what the country will rely on for base load and critical systems. The UK is in for an interesting time with currently nuclear capacity reduced, brexit looming and large percentage of wind. It just takes a couple of windless days to cause problems (see the coal and diesel stor usage recently).
Its a planning and infrastructure question and maybe we will get answers later on today with the chancellor... I wouldnt hold my breath though, most of this stuff needed sorting out 5, 10 years ago. The wind rollout and plans are pretty much bang on with phased approach and that long term plan has always been the case. Its the transition thats the problem but that doesnt get the soundbites or the twitterati going.

joefizz

Coastalwatch said:

I came across this video of Celtic Renewables founder and President Martin Tangney's Presentation to be used for the warm up of the important COP 26 Event. He describes in his own words the journey from an idea at university through to the building of an industrial scale operation near completion at Grangemouth taking waste from the whisky industry and creating Acetone , Butanol and Ethanol from it. Creating a truly circular and sustainable process which the Petrochemical industry replaced some sixty years ago.

A huge opportunity to return the compliment now that CO2 emissions are globally frowned upon.

I found it compelling viewing and brilliant that it's been developed here in the UK. Well, Scotland actually.

You can watch Martin’s talk here.

When I was with abundance, that was one of my investments. It seemed like a great idea initially but was dogged with issues (arent they all) around planning and inevitably with green projects the over reliance on government grants and more importantly public sector interpretation of the wordings.
Im glad they managed to get restarted and wish them well because its a great full cycle idea.